A Gantt chart is a useful graphical tool which shows activities or tasks performed against time. It is also known as visual presentation of a project where the activities are broken down and displayed on a chart which makes it is easy to understand and interpret.
The first Gantt chart was devised in the mid-1890s by Karol Adamiecki, a Polish engineer who ran a steelwork in southern Poland and had become interested in management ideas and techniques.
Some 15 years after Adamiecki, Henry Gantt, an American engineer and project management consultant, devised his own version of the chart and it was this that became widely known and popular in western countries. Consequently, it was Henry Gantt whose name was to become associated with charts of this type.
A Gantt Chart is a timeline that is used as a project management tool to illustrate how the project will run. Originally Gantt charts were prepared laboriously by hand; each time a project changed it was necessary to amend or redraw the chart and this limited their usefulness, continual change being a feature of most projects.
You can view individual tasks, their durations and the sequencing of these tasks. View the overall timeline of the project and the expected completion date. They help you assess how long a project should take, determine the resources needed, and plan the order in which you'll complete tasks.
They're also helpful for managing the dependencies between tasks. Projects of all sizes and types use Gantt charts. These charts are utilized in several industries and for a range of projects, such as building dams, bridges and highways, software development, and development of other goods and services. Project management tools, such as Microsoft Visio, Project, SharePoint or Excel, or specialized software, such as Gantto or Matchware, aid in designing Gantt charts.
As seen in Figure 1 there are serval key features which a modern Gantt Chart should have. The first thing are milestones which indicates the steps which must be reached to get to the final goal. The next thing are Link task, summary task and file sharing which give you all additional information you need for your completing your task.
Additionally, a collaborating tool is necessary to insure and clear and documented communication between all the team members to ensure that all are on the same page.
Last but not least, the task progress which indicates how far each individual is currently with his task and when it can be expected if the team member can really achieve finishing his task in time.
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